RE: ASN.1 and XML

From: Frank Richards <frichards@softquad.com>

To: "'Al B. Snell'" <alaric@alaric-snell.com>

Date: Thu, 24 May 2001 15:21:19 -0400

>
> > > ASN.1 :-) XML is
> > > only competition for ASN.1 because it's being pushed by
> hype; there's
> > > nothing it can usefully do that couldn't be done as well or
> > > better before.
> >
> > Publish a Book. Or website, or a CDROM. Or all three.
> >
>
You misunderstand....Those are things you can do with XML that you can't do
with ASN.1
Same for all the "Just SGML" stuff you dismiss.
XML (and SGML before it) lets people and machines interoperate...You're
claiming that you have a better solution for machine/machine interaction.
You may well. But XML is aimed at the large class of systems with people in
the loop.
And if it is much better for people/machine systems and only a little worse
for machine/machine systems, then yeah, it will fill both niches in
preference to maintaining two skill sets and infrastructures.
Frank
PS. Don't forget printing the stuff and stuffing it in a vault...I bet there
will be scholars who can read [pick a major language] long after the last
tape or CDROM reader stops working.